Last Days Of Humanity has taken me ages to be able to listen to, now i can happily but i hated it a few months ago, i have been a Grindcore fan for years but they just seemed so talentless, but somehow it all came around, i think it was when i started getting into crust which was only a few months ago

i still cant listen to Meshuggah i guess it just isnt my style

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Zodijackyl wrote:

Advocating for using dental floss instead of thread is like preaching that everyone should open their beer with a toothbrush instead of spending a couple bucks on a bottle opener..

The second one is Sunn o))) . For a long time I've considered them as "the one band I will probably never be able to enjoy" but something kept pulling me towards them, same as AN. One day I decided to listen to Monoliths & Dimensions, becouse I loved the artwork and I am glad I did so. I still consider their other albums a bit off putting, but they are kind of growing on me, so that's that.

Monoliths and Dimensions is definitely their most "accessible" album, glad you're liking it.

Probably Immortal's Sons Of Northern Darkness. I am not a huge fan of KVLT black metal, I was strangely surprised after hearing the album a couple more times. I delved deeper into their discography and actually enjoyed it.

Last Days Of Humanity has taken me ages to be able to listen to, now i can happily but i hated it a few months ago, i have been a Grindcore fan for years but they just seemed so talentless, but somehow it all came around, i think it was when i started getting into crust which was only a few months ago

i still cant listen to Meshuggah i guess it just isnt my style

I agree on Meshuggah. I mean, I con tolerate a few choice tracks from time to time but for the most part I just can't get into it. The way the music is constructed just puts me off.

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Kruel wrote:

Not really. Plasma sounds like a toilet, but their music doesn't take me on a magical journey to a toilet.

When I was younger, before I got into black metal, I heard Letum IV by Melencolia Estatica, and Blinded by Light enlightened by darkness by Necrophobic. At first I wasnt to crazy about them, first, because I was listening to my music too loud at the time to begin with which killed my ears from the raw disortion, and because I was uncertain about how I felt about the darker satanic imagery and lyrics in them (for some reason I remember thinking M E was satanic when I was going through my anti-satanic metal phase). As I got older I started to stray from Christianity and more towards atheism simply from thinking about it for the first time in my life, and I also got really into dethklok and Amon Amarth, which lead to me getting into more extreme forms of metal. Since then I fell in love with melancolia estatica, and newer necrophibic.

Other than that there have been plenty of songs I have heard and didnt like at first, but eventually liked alot, but those are two significant ones I remember.

It took me more than a year to get into Xasthur, I was quite new to black metal at the time and remember that a day I was looking at the wikipedia page for black metal and saw the Depressive Black metal subgenre and Xasthur was listed, the name of the band appealed to me so I searched a song, I think it was Prison of Mirrors, and the first impression was "wtf... this is horrible", but a few days I heard 'The Eerie Bliss and Torture (of solitude) and i really liked the first riff of it, but this was the only Xasthur song I liked for almost a year.

Silencer. First time I've heard "Death - Pierce Me" it scared shit out of me. Returned back to it after a couple of months but couldn't stand vocals. Finally managed to listen through whole thing this summer and I gotta say that I simply love it. Similiar thing with Burzum, at first I loved songwriting but vocals were unaccpetable. Later I heard "Filosofem" and distortion made them more enjoyable. After some time I started to like previous works as well.

When I heard "Blackwater Park" by previously mentioned Opeth for the 1st time it was boring. But later, after a few weeks I just felt like I need to listen to it again. It came out of nowhere. When I heard it - I got into it and I bought their whole discography within a month.

Pretty much all I remember right now, if I remind of anything else I'll come back and post it:)

In my case, it was a lot of the bands I found from scouring the Dark Lyrics archive. I found many bands that were outside of the realm that I normally listened to, including Gothic Metal, Neoclassical, and Power Metal. The music I have come to obtain involves a different method of active listening for me. Compared to Evoken, I may listen to Evig Natt instead, for example (not to say they are more or less challenging). The time I spent researching music and expanding my music library, I would say was time well spent (it took many hours and sessions).

Some of the more challanging music i find myself listening to were not hard for me to get in to, many of them i loved from first listen, but i guess i am looking at this from a different point of view. While some of these artists are no doubt an aquired taste i view them as "challenging" as in challenging the concept of what music is and can be. some examples of artists that i feel do this are:Swans ( when i first heard "public castration is a good idea" live album i thought it sounded like a car crash recorded chopped and screwed)Khanate ( the sonic despair(sp) and aura of mental unstability that ooze from the bands work is alarming )Portal (through death metal's inverted wormhole while tripping on lovecraftian acid)Blut Aus Nord (consistently pushing bounderies of what black is, isnt can be and will never be)

I had a lot of trouble getting into Mr. Bungle's "Disco Volante", simply didn't hear the music in it, just a lot of random sounds. Now I don't understand how I didn't hear the music in it at first, great album.

Amebix. When I heard 'em the first time I didn't like it. Recently give 'em fourth or fifth time re-listening and realized that I enjoy only some songs, most from "Arise!" album. The last album "Sonic Mass" is even stranger, I expected that their comeback will be like Hellbastard's but no, I didn't understand the music of "Sonic Mass". Still their music is strange, weird and sometimes scary.

I actually did start off with Cryptopsy. "Dead and Dripping," to be exact. I downloaded a few songs off Limewire or whatever about 5 years ago. I remember loving it, but not getting it at all and never being able to finish a song. It was like a completely foreign language to me, and I loved the hell out of it.

And yeah, "actual" grindcore was pretty hard to get into at first. I used to jam all those "scene"/MySpace grind bands, like See You Next Tuesday and shit, around the time I was getting into Cryptopsy and somehow I had no real trouble getting them. Probably because they didn't really "get" the genre either and just made unlistenable bullshit for kids who thought that shit was cool (i.e. me at 15). But the first time I heard World Extermination, I thought it was just noise. I kinda liked it, but it really did just sound like death metal with a terrible guitarist. Then I heard Scum a few months later and, while still not fully getting it, I understood the genre a bit better. Then Nasum and Rotten Sound and Assuck came in and I finally "got" grindcore, and I've been hooked ever since.

It took me about a year to really get into Mercyful Fate's Melissa and Death's The Sound Of Perseverance but now they are both among my favorite albums. I suppose the odd structures and vocals make them both hard to get a taste for.

It took me a bit to get into black metal, but I think the band that did it for me was Dissection.

Reinkaos was the first of their albums that I listened to, and right from the get-go I loved it. I love melodeath, and Dissection heavily reminded me of it, but the subject matter was something completely different.

I had tried listening to Darkthrone in the past, hearing from personal friends that they are a great BM band. Listened to them, didn't like it, until Dissection turned me onto a darker, different subject matter than what I had normally been subjected to. So, I tried it again and, well, I'm listening to them right now. I actually find it quite enjoyable.

But it's definitely the subject matter. Upon first exposure, the generally shit quality of BM turned me off right away. But, I started listening to the lyrics. I know in most cases the Temple of the Black Light and their beliefs isn't really discussed in BM, but regardless I began paying attention to the lyrics and really enjoying them. Now, well... I don't listen to music I don't enjoy.

Cryptopsy/Suffo/Bolt Thrower - These where some of the first dm bands I tried to get into, but they just didn't click for me. Kinda weird cause I had no problem with Death/Morbid Angel/and Napalm at that same time, who knows maybe it was a vocals thing.

Boris - When I first checked out drone metal, Boris' absolutego was a recommendation so naturally I checked it out. At first I saw it just as an hour of sporadic noise to which made it difficult for me to take in, but now I see it differently.

Non MetalArnold Schoenberg - A piano composer who I've really taken a liking to over the past couple years,but his twelve-tone compositions usually garners all of the listeners attention just not to get lost.

Deathspell Omega and Sigur Ros for sure. My first encounter with both of them was something like "wtf is this...its horrible", but now, my answer to a question "your favorite artist/band?" would be: DsO and Sigur Ros

I agree that listening to Sigur Rós is incredibly challenging, being so ridiculously upbeat and having the most irritating vocalist possible. It's easily the most annoying post-rock band I've heard, even worse than God Is An Astronaut. Deathspell Omega is also challenging in that it's hard to sit through an entire album without falling asleep. Anyone who considers them intellectually superior to any traditional black metal is deluding himself.

The most challenging stuff for me is probably classical. Just recently, I enjoyed Silvestrov's Symphony no. 4 at first listen, as it wasn't overly modern, but it certainly had elements that made it a "challenging" listening experience (as opposed to something very classical like Mozart).

The classical stuff that I find most difficult to get into, or even pay attention to, is music from the classical and early romantic periods. I can happily listen to early music, baroque music, late romanticism, serialism, post-serialism, aleatoric music, etc. all day long. There's just a big void for me in the middle of the history of western music. Beethoven leaves me cold.

Some older less interesting old school death metal like Benediction, Incubus, Pungent Stench, Cenotaph, and Massacre have been getting attention for me as of late. They aren't as skilled as any of the bands I spin on a regular basis but they're all decent at what they do, I don't know if I'd go out of my way to spend money on their material though.

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Malignanthrone wrote:

Thing is, Suicide Silence actually are more sonically massive than a good 95% of all the death metal bands in the Archives! Not metal, sure, but definitely a lot more brutal.

Under_Starmere wrote:

Manowar aren't the Kings of Metal. They're pretenders to a throne that doesn't exist.!

I'd love to blast a bit of Voivod and make a better-looking gun turret to glue on the tortoise's shell to make it look like Killing Technology, but the wife won't let me. I think I'll get an Emperor penguin instead.

The first metal I ever heard was back in '95 while watching a late night music show here called Rage and it was some Napalm Death song which scared the absolute fuck out of me.I'm well into metal now and even saw Napalm Death live 15 years later but they are nowhere up there in my books as say a band like Celtic Frost is.

Really though, I'm the first to point out that overly modern dissonant orchestral music is rubbish

What specific composers/works are you referring to and why do you think they are rubbish?

I can't recall composers other than Schoenberg, I generally don't memorise composers whom I found unimpressive. It's probably the twelve-tone atonality I don't enjoy at all, as I enjoy impressionists like Debussy and Ravel, Russians like Stravinsky and Prokofiev, even Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, and even the odd post-modernist like Silvestrov I mentioned before.

It took me a long time to get into funeral doom because I never had the patience to sit through 10-20 min songs.... I still don't listen to the genre that much, but when I do, I can't help but love it. That's pretty much it I guess, never had that much problems with particular bands. I either immediately like them/see potential, or never listen to them again.... I should chance that attitude though, I may be missing some great things..

_________________"Since that time, I have received highest level confirmations that such organizations not only exist but are rooted in satanic ritual murder and extend across America’s political landscape into nearly every community."

Other than the 'challenge' presented by most extreme metal at first. I guess some bands I really like now like Deathspell Omega, Portal, Disembowelment, and Krallice took some time to get used to and ultimately enjoy.

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SashaGallant wrote:

Just because I listen to Autopsy doesn't mean I like to go shitting on graves and fucking corpses.

kingnuuuur wrote:

Incantation for breakfast, fuck yeah. You wake up and then it's Onward to Chocula.

For me it would have to be the bands from the LLN. Just as my ears were easing into Emperor's debut and Darkthrone's TH, I was assaulted by this even more PRIMITIVE production. But after awhile, even Brenoritvrezorkre's demos were pretty relaxing to listen to.

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ANationalAcrobat wrote:

Viking metal and pagan metal aren't legitimate sub-genres. People need to get over themselves and admit that.

I can't recall composers other than Schoenberg, I generally don't memorise composers whom I found unimpressive. It's probably the twelve-tone atonality I don't enjoy at all, as I enjoy impressionists like Debussy and Ravel, Russians like Stravinsky and Prokofiev, even Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, and even the odd post-modernist like Silvestrov I mentioned before.

I implore you investigate Russian composer Alexander Scriabin.

The Russian composers you mentioned are very modern (relative to classical music, of course), and the 12-tone atonality that turns you off of Schoenberg was, while making slight appearances in some of the fringe works of Prokofiev and certainly in Stravinsky and fellow Russian modernist Shostakovich, never as skillfully applied as when Scriabin (who is Schoenberg's predecessor), did it. He began as a traditional Romantic - indebted heavily to Chopin, Liszt and even Beethoven, and later began to incorporate elements of both French impressionistic music as well as (at the time) uncharted territory into dissonance, atonality, 12-tone passages, etc. His early works are much more accessible, and his introduction of these 'progressive' elements was a very gradual one. You will notice a very natural and observable evolution of style in his works - especially when you observe chronologically his piano sonatas. The third in particular is perhaps one of his most striking works, and the work that really helped me to understand and appreciate the more challenging facets of this music. His tone poems, as well, are insightful and invigorating listens. After Scriabin - guys like Schoenberg started to make more sense, and began to sound a lot less challenging and thus uninviting.

Scriabin's music is swell, but calling him "Schoenberg's predecessor" rings false, I think - not least of all because they were born only two years apart. I think they're independent examples of the endpoint of Romanticism's push for ever-increasing chromaticism in the interests of expressiveness. I do agree that if Ilywhan is into stuff like Tristan und Isolde, which is chromatically-saturated but still tonal, he would like Scriabin, as well as Schoenberg's early tonal works like Gurrelieder, which is quite Wagnerian.

Personally, I find the some of the histrionically expressive aspects - sudden drastic dynamic shifts, mainly - of the all aforementioned pieces/composers far more daunting than the level of chromaticism. I find stuff like late Boulez a lot easier on the ears than Wagner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tQe59D5Pzs

You're probably right about my jumping the gun with labeling Scriabin as Schoenberg's sonic predecessor. I guess I think of it that way because of how I discovered them, and because I do know that the two composers worked very independently of each other. I'm sure they weren't very aware of the other's works when they each began exploring atonality.

Gurrelieder is splendid. Transfigured Night is another turning point my understanding and appreciation of Schoenberg, Scriabin, etc.

The insane dynamics of guys like Scriabin is a bit hard to stomach at first - but after baring through it, I've grown to love it. It's easier when you begin to anticipate the dynamic shifts after multiple listens.

I know it seems kinda lame, but the first time I listened to Morbid Angel's first records it seemed really crazy, same goes for Cannibal Corpse (I especially remember listening to 'Butchered at First' the first time and thinking, wow what is this?). But now since I've listened to some other Death metal bands, I can say Morbid Angel's 'Domination' is insanely good. "Where the Slime Live" is a personal favorite.

_________________"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." - William Blake